Linux and fonts

[Paul Lussier]

First, clarification: The phrases *completely brain-dead* and *almost
impossible to change* we meant from the point of view of a neophyte.
I did not mean to imply that the settings actually are impossible to
change.  I was also relaying most of these complaints from a
colleague, they aren't actually my complaints (I'm perfectly happy
with a standard 8x13 xterm with emacs and w3m :)

kclark at elbrysnetworks.com (Kevin D. Clark) writes:

> I don't view Firefox's defaults as completely brain-dead either.  I
> would be *fascinated* to hear about what is *completely brain-dead*
> and *almost impossible to change* about Firefox's defaults.

Try changing the default behavior of the middle-click action in
Firefox such that nothing happens when you middle-click[1].  There is
no place at all to configure the actions of mouse click in the default
configuration of Firefox within the 'Prefences' control panel.  One
must bring up the 'about:config' page and attempt to discern which
knob to tweak here. Most people, experienced or not, seem to forget
about:config exists, should we expect someone completely new to
Firefox (regardless of OS) to know about it?  Or expect them to
understand what these settings, which seem to have no documentation,
do?

Or, try figuring out how to change the order of existing tabs.  As far
as I can tell, it can't be done.  Even within about:config. Evidently
this actually requires a plugin (whereas in Galeon, you just did the
obvious, click and drag)[2].

-- 
Seeya,
Paul

[1] The user who ranted to me the other day was trying to exactly
    this.  When inadvertantly clicking the mouse-wheel on his browser
    while scrolling down the page, he suddenly ended up at Google.
    Evidently, whatever was in the X paste buffer was not a URL, and
    Firefox is, by default, configured to use the input as a search query
    for Google.  He was extremely annoyed to a) be going somewhere he
    didn't request, and b) to have his current page replaced by something
    unexpectedly.

[2] Granted, Firefox is extremely lightweight and stripped down
    compared to it's predecessors like Galeon.  But they've made it hard
    to configure simple things which were either obvious or required
    little to no thought in other browsers.